Oakland 911 service fully restored after 36-hour-long outage caused by copper wire cutting
OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Oakland has restored 911 phone service after an outage that lasted more than 36 hours, according to an alert from the city.
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
The city said Friday morning phone service to all city systems is now back online after the Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system and internet came back Thursday night. Crews worked overnight to repair AT&T copper wire lines that were cut.
Oakland said it is working with AT&T to strengthen critical infrastructure and improve backup systems following the outage.
While full service has returned, Oakland police are still looking for a suspect.
MORE: CHP plane catches two suspected copper wire thieves in the act near high-speed rail overpass
The city's 911 dispatch system for police and fire services went down at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and calls were being routed through the Alameda County Sheriff's Office while the problem got sorted out.
Beere said in his almost 30 years with the department he's never seen the optic lines go out and the phones being disconnected in a way that impacted the fire department system, as well.
The city has contingency plans for just such a situation but "unfortunately both of the initial fallback plans were compromised," Beere said without elaborating on what the fallback plans are.
Beere said earlier in the day on Thursday that his department was only responding to "priority one calls" and that Oakland's internet technology department is working with AT&T to restore services.
A 911 systems expert said the incident highlights concerns about aging copper-wire infrastructure still used by many emergency communication systems.
"Currently the 911 technology that is in use is 911 era technology. It is based on copper wiring which is reliable but it is aging and subject to failure," said Mark Chase.
An emerging alternative is Next-Generation 911, an internet-based system that relies on fiber-optic cables instead of copper wiring.
More outages
Oakland was not the only police department having issues.
Police in both Morgan Hill and Gilroy say their non-emergency phone lines continues to be down in outages caused by thieves cutting copper wire.
There is no estimate of when the non-emergency lines will be restored, but 911 service in Morgan Hill and Gilroy is not affected.
There were also outages in Riverside and Santa Barbara counties.
